July arrived hot. The city stayed in the high eighties for the first three weeks, the central air rattled at every dinner party, and the bathroom counter narrowed itself further to the few formulas that survived an outdoor lunch. The Olympics campaigns started landing mid-month — Rio’s opening ceremony was August 5, but the makeup-and-skincare brand calendars were already aligned around it — and resort-collection deliveries were filling out the department-store floors. Meanwhile our group chat was three weddings deep into July and finalising the rotation that would carry us through Labor Day. The month’s lesson was simple: heat is the most honest editor a routine ever gets.
The sweat-proof rotation
The heat dictated the kit. Charlotte Tilbury Magic Cream stayed as the only base most days; on the rare day a tinted moisturiser was needed it was the NARS Pure Radiant Tinted Moisturizer — sweat-proof in a way the heavier foundations were not. Cream blush was Cloud Paint or nothing. MAC‘s Pro Longwear Concealer was the only formula that survived the subway platform; we forgave its slightly drier finish for that reason alone. Mascara was a single coat of Lancôme Hypnose, and the eye liner was off the table for July. The takeaway: in heat, the kit becomes a series of inclusions and exclusions, and the inclusions earn their place.
Festival recovery, but for adults
Three friends came back from European festivals through July with sunburn, dehydration, and a broken sleep schedule, and the recovery skincare conversation that ensued was the most useful editorial of the month. The post-festival routine that worked: a deep-clean cleanser, a long shower with cold water at the end, a gentle Drunk Elephant Babyfacial as a reset, sheet masks back to back two evenings in a row, and an actual eight-hour sleep on day three. The product that earned its place over and over was the Avène Thermal Spring Water mist that lived in the freezer between uses. The takeaway: there is no instant fix for festival-burned skin, but a methodical seventy-two-hour recovery still works.
Resort collections hit the floor
The pre-fall and resort deliveries arrived in stores through the back half of July, and they were the most-shopped pieces on the floor for our group. Tory Burch‘s Resort 2017 leaned heavily into the moroccan-tile prints; Coach‘s pre-fall continued the Stuart Vevers stitched-leather story; and the Diane von Furstenberg resort wrap-dresses sold through faster than any spring 2016 piece. The Resort floor was, as ever, the smartest place to buy if you were dressing for the actual climate of the month, not for what the season was supposed to look like in theory. The lesson: the Resort and pre-fall calendar is a working woman’s friend.
Olympics campaigns, with a long fuse
Mid-July, the prestige beauty brands started releasing their Rio-Olympics-aligned campaign content. Olay ran a Team-USA-aligned package; MAC launched a Selena Quintanilla collection that moved the rest of the conversation about heritage beauty branding on; CoverGirl released its summer set with the Olympics ad-spend behind it. The campaigns were unusually well-considered for tied-to-event programming. Our July takeaway: athlete-aligned beauty endorsements work when the brand has a real product story to tell, not when the campaign is just a logo placement.
Hair, third coat of dry shampoo
Three full days between blowouts had become the new norm by the end of July, with two coats of dry shampoo doing the structural work. Batiste on day two, Oribe Gold Lust on day three, and Bumble and bumble Surf Spray for the perpetual second-day texture. The Living Proof Dry Shampoo was the dark-horse contender that started showing up in our pouches mid-month — the formula left no white residue, which mattered for the bronde half of our group. The takeaway: a good dry shampoo extends a fifty-dollar blowout by another fifty dollars of value.
Glossier Stretch concealer arrives
Mid-July Glossier launched Stretch concealer, the cream stick in eight shades that filled out the brand’s Phase Two color cosmetics line. The promise was a flexible-finish concealer that moved with the skin instead of cracking on top of it, and after two weeks of testing through the heat we agreed: it bested every powder-set concealer we had paired with the dewy mandate. Two of us made it our daily; one stayed loyal to NARS Radiant Creamy. The takeaway: in summer, the right concealer is the one that disappears, not the one that builds.
Outdoor-wedding makeup, the long-version brief
Three outdoor weddings in July refined the long-day rotation. The base was Magic Cream and Stretch concealer; the only powder was a tiny amount of Charlotte Tilbury Airbrush Flawless on the T-zone. Cream blush in two shades, blended with ring fingers; brown MAC Eye Kohl tightlined; mascara on top lash only; lip stain in any berry pulled from the late-day lighting test. The Avène mist for re-set after the ceremony. The takeaway: an eight-hour outdoor face is a five-product face plus discipline.
What we are watching in August
August brings the Olympics in earnest, the back-to-school drugstore aisle reset, and the first proper fall-collection previews from the prestige houses. We are watching for the wave of dewy-skin formula reformulations that always lands ahead of NYFW Spring 2017 (Sept 8 to 15 this year), the Sephora Beauty Insider VIB sale, and the late-summer fragrance launches that traditionally pivot toward warmer base notes. Our own August plan: protect the bronde, finish the C-Firma, finally try the Glossier Stretch concealer that just landed. We will see you on the first Tuesday of August.